Samus Aran said:
It sells more than a lot of Nintendo franchises that keep getting new games... As for Pikmin, it uses very realistic graphics, so I doubt it's as cost-efficient as you think. The latest game had a much longer development time than any Metroid game ever had. In fact, it took Retro Studios longer to make the Donkey Kong Country games than it did with the Metroid Prime games. I seriously doubt making the Prime games was more expensive. Metroid Prime 1: 2002 Metroid Prime 2: 2004 (2 year gap) Metroid Prime 3: 2007 (3 year gap) Donkey Kong Country Returns: 2010 (3 year gap) Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: 2014 (3.5 years gap) The development teams of the DKC games were also bigger than the teams working on Metroid Prime 1-3. |
The highest-selling Metroid game is Metroid Prime at a whopping 2.82 million copies... It is clearly not the juggernaut that are Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Pokemon... even Kirby sells better. Only 6 other franchises sold less, most of them being newer (Pikmin, Tomodachi) and of courses Fire Emblem (but this one's seems to sell better now).
I still don't think it's much of a viable choice. Yes, the gap was bigger for the Donkey Kong Country games, but Returns sold 6.40 million copies, and Tropical Freeze is sitting now at 1.20 on a 10M userbase (VS MP3 on 100 million with 1.80 million games sold). Look, I know by your username that you must be a pretty serious fan, and I like Metroid, but Metroid, let's be honest, is far from being Nintendo's most profitable franchise. If I'd be in an investors' meeting, and someone would pitch the idea of a new Metroid game, I'd be very, very skeptical about his selling potential.
Metroid would need somehow a stronger argument to sell. Like a big online Halo-style community. Maybe it would attract more people.
